Cat Mouse Trio is a 3-channel installation that uses multiple perspectives, unscripted choreography, and the art of play to explore how a multiple viewpoints revolve around an invisible locus.

Three videographers shot the video and assigned these rules: videotape one another, ignore the camera that is recording you, and keep the action moving. The videographers act as both predator and prey across an urban terrain while simultaneously creating and documenting. A form of anti-choreography such that Cat Mouse Trio performs the video landscape and prompts viewers to form relationships between the three video screens.

Balkany in front of a Gropius-designed power plant on the Reese hospital campus. Photo: Edward Lifson

When Chicago recently dreamt of hosting the 2016 Olympics, its bid included the demolition of an unused hospital complex to make way for an Olympic Village. Then a young architect in town named Grahm Balkany sounded alarm bells that some of the buildings, the planning, and other aspects were the work of the pioneer of modern architecture and creator of the Bauhaus–Walter Gropius! Once Chicago lost the Olympics to Rio you’d think the city would have called off the bulldozers, right? Alas, if you think that, obviously you don’t know “The Chicago Way.”